FOOSCH Community Update

Dear Parents and Carers

As you would be aware by now, the ACT Government has extended the lockdown order until 2^nd September 2021. As such we provide the following updates

Before and After School Care:

Following on from our previous email sent,  we would like to recap the following:

During the lockdown, FOOSHC will remain open for children of families of essential workers and those children experiencing vulnerabilities. Other families are being advised to keep their children at home. Details about the lockdown are available on the ACT Government COVID-19 response website.

As a result of the lockdown extension, Services Australia has advised that areas that are under a Commonwealth Hotspot declaration for more than 7 days qualify for special purpose absence days. This means that if your child is not attending care during the time the area is declared a hotspot these will not count toward your annual 42 days of absences allowed under the child care subsidy (CCS). Please refer to the following link for full details https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/child-care-subsidy/how-manage-your-payment/if-your-child-absent-from-child-care

In addition to this, the P & C executive committee has made the decision to waive the Gap fee for any child not using service during the current lockdown. This means there will be no cost to maintaining your enrolment with FOOSHC for when we are able to return to more normal levels of operations.

Given that fees are paid fortnightly in advance the Gap fees, for any child not attending, from Monday 16^th August will be credited back to your account with FOOSHC and applied as a discount to fees incurred at a later time. Unfortunately, due to our understanding of the requirements from Services Australia, the next scheduled charge will go ahead however this too will be re-credited back to your FOOSHC account.

Once again we request that if you intend to utilise the FOOSHC service for either before school care or after school care you will need to contact us (info@fooshc.org.au) to confirm the placement to enable us to manage staff ratio numbers on a daily basis. As per our last email, care will not be available to children who have not or will not attend school on that particular day.

FASA- Forrest After School Activities

All After School Activities programs will be cancelled for the remainder of Term 3. In addition to this, we will be undertaking a full review of the After School Activities program in Term 4, and as such, no program will be offered until at least 2022.

We will be looking at partial refunds for the remainder of the term by the end of the month and will advise of these once we have worked this out.

The review of the program will be undertaken to evaluate the financial viability of the program as a whole as well as the level of administration required to offer these activities. This administration burden includes the late collection of students after the activities have finished as well as organising classrooms with the school as recent feedback highlights teachers reluctance to offer their classrooms to undertake activities due to some the behaviour of some participants which has resulted in the destruction of teaching resources and general disrespect for property which adds to the cost of running the program.

Once this review is completed we will ascertain if the After School Activities program will run in 2022.

We would welcome any feedback on the Forrest After School Activities Program prior to the review. All feedback and comments should be emailed to president@forrestpandc.com.au

Thank you for your patience during this time and stay safe

Belinda Fitzgerald
President Forrest School P & C